Have you ever wondered what other company’s fleets look like? How other companies source their fleet units, parts, and services? What information is needed to begin? The first thing to know, is that no two fleet profiles are the same. The second thing to understand, is that there is no right place to start; it all depends on your corporate procurement goals. Are you trying to maximize upfront funds? Is your goal to streamline services and optimize vehicle performance? Are you attempting to marry two fleets after a merger or acquisition? There are endless scenarios that will benefit from strategic procurement thinking.

This week there are two webinars taking place in addition to ProcureCon Direct which is being held in California on Monday and Tuesday. Click on the title of the webinar below to view the full description and register.
BTW: If you haven’t already, sign up for our mailing list to be sure you get my weekly recommendations in your Inbox each Monday.

“I cannot guarantee whether you will be successful after a well-prepared negotiation, but I can 100 percent guarantee failure or finding yourself outsmarted and in a concessionary position if you choose not to do a thorough prep prior to a negotiation.” (p. 38)
Mastering High Stakes Negotiations: Both Sides of the Table by Mark M. Bilgin, Ph. D. (BookLocker.com, 2017) is true to its title in that it lays out all of the considerations associated with the most critical, highest dollar value negotiations conducted. In an odd way, however, even meeting that high bar is still selling the book short.
If you are a people watcher, or a student of human behavior, you will absolutely love this book. I was immediately drawn in by the author’s use of case studies, both his own and the ‘outside’ experiences of others to illustrate in colorful but honest fashion the incentives and pitfalls associated with negotiation prep. Negotiation is, at its simplest level, the use of leverage, exchange, and (somewhat) predictable human behavior to bring parties together for their perceived benefit. As a result, you can not be a master negotiator without being aware of and interested in what people say and do. That may come as a great relief to anyone that still thinks negotiation is about aggressively dominating ‘them’ to get what is best for yourself at any cost.

Sourcing managers with a Microsoft enterprise agreement (EA) that is about to expire face an important decision and may have many questions. Should they renew their next EA along the same lines as they did three years ago? Expand it to embrace Microsoft’s new cloud-based services, including the Office 365 suite? Scale it back significantly to save money?
Fundamental changes in Microsoft’s product and licensing strategies mean drastic changes to its software assurance’s (SA) value. Your decision criteria will be very different from when you last evaluated your EA, and any related decision involves placing bets on your organization’s future deployment of Microsoft products.
Where should you place your bet?

The ‘app boom’ is widely recognized to be slowing as we approach the half way mark of 2017. Success stories such as Snapchat and Uber remain (in terms of continued, steep growth), but the aggregate growth in the app market has started to decline for the first time Apple introduced the App Store in 2008. The truth is, most people have already downloaded all the apps they need. The market is already saturated with apps that satisfy our basic needs: travel/directions, calendars, messaging, social media, gaming, news, weather, etc. This fact is well known by tech giants such as Facebook and their eyes are already on the next opportunity: bot technology.

3D printing and its applications are evolving rapidly, although most manufacturing businesses are at least five years away from mainstream adoption of the technology. It has a long way to go before becoming a routine aspect of many production environments. Market leaders, however, are gradually embracing 3D printing to take advantage of the technology and stay ahead of the competition. The advantages are numerous – speed, lower cost, time and effort, cheaper manufacturing, ability to customize products, etc.

Have you ever wondered what other company’s fleets look like? How other companies source their fleet units, parts, and services? What information is needed to begin? The first thing to know, is that no two fleet profiles are the same. The second thing to understand, is that there is no right place to start; it all depends on your corporate procurement goals. Are you trying to maximize upfront funds? Is your goal to streamline services and optimize vehicle performance? Are you attempting to marry two fleets after a merger or acquisition? There are endless scenarios that will benefit from strategic procurement thinking.

This week there are two webinars taking place in addition to ProcureCon Direct which is being held in California on Monday and Tuesday. Click on the title of the webinar below to view the full description and register.

“I cannot guarantee whether you will be successful after a well-prepared negotiation, but I can 100 percent guarantee failure or finding yourself outsmarted and in a concessionary position if you choose not to do a thorough prep prior to a negotiation.” (p. 38)

Mastering High Stakes Negotiations: Both Sides of the Table by Mark M. Bilgin, Ph. D. (BookLocker.com, 2017) is true to its title in that it lays out all of the considerations associated with the most critical, highest dollar value negotiations conducted. In an odd way, however, even meeting that high bar is still selling the book short.

If you are a people watcher, or a student of human behavior, you will absolutely love this book. I was immediately drawn in by the author’s use of case studies, both his own and the ‘outside’ experiences of others to illustrate in colorful but honest fashion the incentives and pitfalls associated with negotiation prep. Negotiation is, at its simplest level, the use of leverage, exchange, and (somewhat) predictable human behavior to bring parties together for their perceived benefit. As a result, you can not be a master negotiator without being aware of and interested in what people say and do. That may come as a great relief to anyone that still thinks negotiation is about aggressively dominating ‘them’ to get what is best for yourself at any cost.

We have sort of an interesting event dynamic this week – three events, all on Thursday between 8am and 1pm ET. Of the three, I think there is one standout event, detailed below. Looking at the current calendar, clearly webinar organizers are expecting the bulk of summer vacations to be over by the week of August 28th, and September is already starting to take shape. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

Sourcing managers with a Microsoft enterprise agreement (EA) that is about to expire face an important decision and may have many questions. Should they renew their next EA along the same lines as they did three years ago? Expand it to embrace Microsoft’s new cloud-based services, including the Office 365 suite? Scale it back significantly to save money?

Fundamental changes in Microsoft’s product and licensing strategies mean drastic changes to its software assurance’s (SA) value. Your decision criteria will be very different from when you last evaluated your EA, and any related decision involves placing bets on your organization’s future deployment of Microsoft products.

This week’s three webinars all draw on big trends affecting all companies and industries: changing workforce structure, increased globalization within enterprises, and the impact of uncertainty on planning and risk mitigation. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

This week’s webinars don’t necessarily cover new or out of the ordinary topics, but they do bring us some new voices. See Tuesday’s event to hear from David Atkinson (Four Pillars) and Thursday’s to hear from Linda Chuan (Salesforce). Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

After a two-week hiatus (because there have been very few events) our recommendations return this week with three great webinars. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

The ‘app boom’ is widely recognized to be slowing as we approach the half way mark of 2017. Success stories such as Snapchat and Uber remain (in terms of continued, steep growth), but the aggregate growth in the app market has started to decline for the first time Apple introduced the App Store in 2008. The truth is, most people have already downloaded all the apps they need. The market is already saturated with apps that satisfy our basic needs: travel/directions, calendars, messaging, social media, gaming, news, weather, etc. This fact is well known by tech giants such as Facebook and their eyes are already on the next opportunity: bot technology.

If you’re thinking of attending a webinar this week, don’t hesitate. With the July 4th holiday in the U.S. next week closing most companies on Monday and Tuesday, the events calendar is a ghost town. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

3D printing and its applications are evolving rapidly, although most manufacturing businesses are at least five years away from mainstream adoption of the technology. It has a long way to go before becoming a routine aspect of many production environments. Market leaders, however, are gradually embracing 3D printing to take advantage of the technology and stay ahead of the competition. The advantages are numerous – speed, lower cost, time and effort, cheaper manufacturing, ability to customize products, etc.

In addition to the live events below, Odesma is hosting a live event in London, “Making Procurement Transformation Deliver.” Confirmed speakers include Harry Wiltshire, Professional Athlete, Market Dojo, Provalido and Procurement PeopleCloud. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

In addition to the virtual events below, ISM-New York is holding their annual meeting on June 14th at the New York Executive Conference Center. Join them to hear speakers from D&B, Bloomberg, and more. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

Organizations that are not leveraging a managed service provider (MSP) and vendor management system (VMS) may be paying too much for contingent talent and are at risk of noncompliance with various labor and benefit laws. They are also likely to have challenges involving time to source quality talent.

I had the opportunity to speak with representatives from both Jaggaer and Pool4Tool last week in anticipation of this week’s ‘official’ merger announcement. We talked about geography, market share, and functionality and customer overlap.

By far, the most interesting part of our conversation was about the plans for their new combined go-to-market strategy. And while it demonstrates how thoughtfully this new entity is approaching the market as a whole, it also provides an excellent opportunity for procurement to reflect upon the increasing granularity of spend management.

In addition to the virtual events below, ProcureCon IT Sourcing is taking place in Austin, TX Monday through Wednesday and the Manufacturing Supply Chain Officer (MSCO) Summit is taking place on Thursday and Friday in Singapore. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.

“We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids and we call it leverage.” -Gordon Gecko (Wall Street 2)

Leverage - a word that has such meaning it could be used to define itself. When it comes to negotiating, leverage is king. Whether you’re trying to negotiate a multimillion dollar contract or figuring out how to get an extra quart of strawberries included with your purchase at the local farmer’s market, people are always searching for it, and without it you have nothing. Having no ground to stand on when attempting to ask for a compromise from another party is not an ideal position.

This is a short week with Memorial Day in the U.S. and a Bank Holiday in England, but that didn’t prevent companies from scheduling webinars. In addition to the events below, the May ISM-New York Report on Business will be released on Friday at 9:45am ET. Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register. You can also check out my notes from one of last week's webinars, The Digital Procurement Era, presented by Dr. Rob Handfield.

This week includes one of the best slates of webinars I have seen go by in a long time. Of the 10 events taking place, HALF of them deserve recommendations. Maybe this is the last ‘big hurrah’ before the official start to summer next weekend? Click on the title of each webinar below to view the full description and register.